Kalaiyarasi Kanagalingam, a now 15-year-old survivor of Mullivaikkal, spoke about the last memory of her father and the importance of Tamil genocide recognition at a conference hosted at the Houses of Parliament in October 2019.

May 17th, 2009 was the last time she saw her father.

We have reproduced her full speech to the conference below.

Several checkpoints have been set up in and around Mullivaikkal by the Sri Lankan police and military, as Tamil genocide remembrance day on May 18 draws closer.

More than ten intelligence officers have taken over an unoccupied house near the Mullivaikkal memorial monument and have been undertaking surveillance and photographing those who come to the monument and telling them to leave immediately.

Student organisations in the North-East came together and distributed the essential ingredients that many Tamils solely survived on when they were trapped in the fire zone, 11 years ago.

 _{(Tamils handed out 'Kanji' in 2009)}

Two vigils to mark Tamil Genocide Remembrance Week were again surrounded by surveillance today, including by the officer-in-charge of Jaffna police.

The police officer joined the usual throng of intelligence personnel at the vigils organised by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) at Gurunagar St James’s Church - the sites of a massacre by the Sri Lankan Air Force and another by the navy, and the World Tamil Conference Massacre Memorial.

(Photo Credit: trokilinochchi)

Over a decade has passed since the Mullivaikkal massacre but “Tamils remain heavily discriminated against by a state that has yet to reckon with its violent past,” writes Visvajit Sriramrajan for The Diplomat.

<p>Sri Lanka President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has reportedly agreed to a billion-dollar loan from China despite owing 4.8 billion dollars this year.</p> <p>Rajapaksa has borrowed from China twice in the past two months in pursuit of a bailout as the country’s foreign reserve shrank to&nbsp; $7.2 billion in April. He has stated one of his key objectives is to attract foreign investment into the country.</p>

Despite the on-going damage to national reconciliation, Gotabaya Rajapaksa is insistent on the normalisation of “military’s influence in the civilian sphere”, warns the Economist. 
 

The normalisation of the military

Jaffna University students commemorated the Kumuthini massacre and the Mullivaikkal genocide before being disrupted by Sri Lankan police officers. 

the students lit lamps in tribute to the Tamils who were massacred by Sri Lankan navy officers aboard the Kumuthini boat in 1985 and the tens of thousands of lives lost in the Mullivaikkal genocide in 2009.

<p>Sri Lanka has issued a request for rapid financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) following growing economic concern as the country responds to the coronavirus pandemic.</p> <p>The IMF has issued approximately 18 billion USD to support developing countries to support their economies. Fifty countries, including Sri Lanka are to be assessed for receiving this rapid financial facility and a further fifty country have been granted approval. &nbsp;</p>

<p>The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute has called upon Sri Lanka’s Minister of Justice,&nbsp;Nimal Siripala de Silva, to ensure that the government due process in handlining the case of Former state counsel and prominent lawyer, Heejaz Hizbullah.</p> <p>Hizbullah was detained on 14 April, along with five others, under the much-criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). He was arrested under alleged involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday Bombings. Despite being detained, a detention order was not served, and he was denied confidential access to a lawyer.</p>